


the world comes to life, and everything's bright (from beginning to end, when you have a friend)

by daisylincs



Series: Agents of Fluff 2020 [5]
Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Academy Era, Adorable FitzSimmons (Agents of SHIELD), Agents of fluff, Canon Compliant, F/M, FitzSimmonsing, Fluff, Fluff Bingo 2020, Inside jokes, My Random OCs Ship It, Shipper on Deck, Teasing, everyone ships it, it's just really ship-able okay
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-12
Updated: 2020-11-12
Packaged: 2021-03-10 04:07:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,155
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27508084
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/daisylincs/pseuds/daisylincs
Summary: Fitz and Simmons's classmates are very confused (and, admittedly, very drawn in by) their apparent psychic link, and theendlessamount of inside jokes they have.(Pure fluff and silliness, fills the squares "Fitzsimmons" and "Inside jokes" on the on the @agentsofchallenges Fluff Bingo 2020.)
Relationships: Leo Fitz/Jemma Simmons
Series: Agents of Fluff 2020 [5]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1997707
Comments: 8
Kudos: 33
Collections: Agents of Fluff 2020





	the world comes to life, and everything's bright (from beginning to end, when you have a friend)

**Author's Note:**

> You know those fics that are _about_ your favourite couple, but from someone else’s point of view? (It’s always funnier when it’s a random stranger.) Yeah, I’ve been meaning to try that out for a while now, because I thought it could end up being both completely ridiculous and brilliantly fun. (That's exactly what this turned out to be, lol.) Day 5 of the Fluff Bingo gave me the perfect excuse to check off that little box on the fluff bingo, so here we are! 
> 
> And yes, I can laugh at myself, too, Kat, T and May, so my OC is called Sally. You’re my Jameses <333

“Sally… Sally… _Sally!”_

Sally jolted awake, banging her knees on the bottom of her desk and wincing. _“Ow,”_ she said. “What the -” 

“You missed the draw,” James informed her, standing in front of her station with a wicked smirk. 

All her sleepiness disappeared in an instant. “I _what?!?!”_

“You missed the draw,” James said unapologetically. “You _wanted_ to fall asleep in the middle of the day, didn’t you?” 

Sally glared daggers at him. “You _asshole!”_ she hissed. “You _knew_ this was going to happen when you made me drink all that wine.” 

He didn’t even try to deny it. “Hey, it was the only way you were _ever_ going to ask Helen out.” 

“I hate you,” she said, but there wasn’t much heat behind it. 

He nodded solemnly, but the effect was completely ruined by the shit-eating grin he was wearing. “I’ll tell Helen you said that.” 

“You are _officially_ the worst best friend in the world,” Sally complained, wishing she could bang her head against the table, repeatedly.

James shrugged, eyes sparkling wickedly. “But you already knew that, didn’t you? Besides -” he held out a piece of paper to her “- since you missed the draw, we all decided you’d be the one to give them The List.” 

Sally’s jaw _dropped._ “Excuse me, _what?”_ she spluttered when she had managed to pick her jaw up from the floor. “How… how is that at all fair? That’s what the draw was supposed to be for!” 

“Well, you were asleep for it,” James pointed out, unhelpfully. 

She glared, but much as she wanted to, she couldn’t argue with that. She _had_ been asleep, which by the official betting rules of the Academy labs made her fair game.

Asshole best friend, 1; Sally, 0. _Dammit, wine._

Muttering under her breath, Sally snatched the piece of paper from James’s hand and got up, dusting herself off and taking a deep breath before beginning to cross the lab. 

“Excuse me,” she said when she reached the section of the lab that was generally reserved (except for Fitzsimmons updates, of course.) 

Candidates Fitz and Simmons turned around exactly at the same time, Simmons offering her a small, welcoming smile and Fitz a scowl as thanks for interrupting him mid-sentence. 

Sally winced, and, seeing this, Simmons elbowed Fitz in the ribs without so much as shifting position. “Be _nice,”_ she admonished. Then to Sally, “How can we help?” 

“Um,” Sally said, tripping over how to get the words out. _Hi, so my classmates and I - you know, the ones that are your age but five levels below you both - made a list of all the things you guys say to each other that’s ridiculously cute, and now we want an explanation._

Yeah, as though _that_ didn’t sound completely stalkery.

They _weren’t_ stalkers, though! At least… she didn’t think they were. They were just really invested in the Fitzsimmons psychic link and the way they never went anywhere without each other but still managed to be completely in denial and - _oops._ They were totally stalkers, weren’t they? 

Sally cringed at herself. _Dammit, dammit, dammit._ Why did this have to be _her?_

Through the glass door behind Fitzsimmons, she saw James waving at her, mouthing something that seemed to be “don’t… chicken… wine… Helen.” Wait, _what?_

He said it again, slower this time, and punctuated it with a shit-eating grin that somehow made his entire point clear. _Don’t you dare chicken out, or I’ll have wasted my wine_ and _I’ll tell Helen._

In that moment, she wished it was legal to commit best friend-icide. 

But she steeled herself and turned back to Fitz and Simmons, who were waiting with patient smiles (well, Simmons was. Fitz’s looked more like a grimace, likely due to the fact that Simmons’s elbow was still hovering very close to his ribs.)

Sally licked her lips, then unfolded the piece of paper and cleared her throat. “Right, so, um. My friends and I noticed that you guys, uh… have a lot of sayings? That we don’t quite understand? And we, uh, we were wondering if you could… clarify.” 

That hadn’t sounded _too_ pathetic, had it? 

Fitz and Simmons exchanged glances. “Sayings?” Simmons repeated with a little frown. “What do you mean, sayings?” 

Sally could feel her cheeks heating. “Like, you know -” she glanced down at the first item on her list, “The Cat. And, uh, The Liver. We think those two are related?” 

Simmons’s lips twitched, and Fitz groaned out loud. 

Oh, thank God, they weren’t mad - _and_ they seemed to know exactly what she meant.

“They are related,” Simmons said with an affectionate roll of her eyes. “By Fitz’s melodrama.” 

_“Excuse_ me?” Fitz spluttered. _“My_ melodrama? More like _your_ forgetfulness and _your_ disrespect for general hygiene!” 

“Fitz, this is a _lab,_ dissecting things is what I _do,”_ Simmons said, folding her arms. 

“But not next to my _lunch,”_ Fitz said with an expression that spoke of volumes of disgusted trauma. 

“Well, technically your lunch shouldn't have been in the lab in the _first_ place," Simmons pointed out. “It’s a _lab,_ Fitz, you’re supposed to eat in the -”

“- canteen, but, please, nobody’s obeyed that rule since Weaver first gave the lecture,” Fitz interjected, folding his arms too and unintentionally mirroring her position exactly.

Simmons huffed. “Maybe, but I maintain that if your lunch hadn’t been there, the liver wouldn’t have ended up next to it, and we wouldn’t have had a problem.”

“And _I_ maintain that you shouldn’t have _putrid, rotting flesh_ right next to my station, you know how I feel about that,” he shot back.

Unnoticed by the two of them, Sally made a little check mark on her list.

A moment later, Simmons seemed to remember that Sally was still there, and turned back to her with a guilty expression. “Erm, yes, sorry,” she said. “That’s the cat. Was there anything else?” 

Sally glanced down at her list and winced. “Plenty.” 

“Well, fire away,” Simmons said with a pleasant smile, ignoring Fitz’s muffled grumble.

Sally cleared her throat. “Next up is, um, _crash clatter bang shriek?_ Yeah. Er. We’ve noticed that Fitz says that to you a lot when he’s teasing you?” 

Simmons sighed. “You _do_ say that a lot, don’t you, Fitz?”

“Absolutely,” he agreed, nudging her shoulder with his. “Because it’s bloody brilliant.” 

Simmons rolled her eyes. “Fitz thinks that my reaction to a prank he and one of our other classmates pulled in biochemistry is the funniest thing in the world -” 

“You screamed like a girl,” Fitz said proudly. 

“How many times must I tell you, Fitz, I _am_ a girl?” Simmons huffed. 

Sally made another check on her list, trying not to grin. 

“The next thing I want to ask you guys about is something that we’ve _all_ been wondering about,” she said, glancing up again. “And by that I mean _everyone,_ even the people who didn’t help with, er, the list.” 

Simmons raised her eyebrows. “Oh?” 

Sally shifted, feeling more than a little awkward again. “Er, yes, well. So, um, we’ve noticed that if someone, uh, asks one of you two, you know, _out_ , then the other one of you whispers something that makes you both giggle so hard that you can’t even reply to the poor sap.” 

Fitz and Simmons exchanged glances, and Sally tried not to gape at the way they seemed to have an entire conversation in raised eyebrows and half-smiles. She was here for _science,_ dammit.

“You noticed that?” Fitz asked eventually, sounding… not _unfriendly,_ but not particularly like he was about to give her a hug, either.

Sally shrugged, feeling more awkward than ever now. “It’s, um. It’s really sweet? And also really confusing, because as far as we can gather, you seem to be saying, er, _cabbage.”_

Fitz and Simmons started snickering at exactly the same time, nudging each other’s shoulders. _“Cabbage,”_ Fitz whispered, and Simmons snorted.

“Exactly like that!” Sally said enthusiastically, drawing a bright pink circle around _cabbage_ on her list.

“Well, the story behind that one’s really simple,” Fitz said. “Jemma dated this guy who -” 

“ - did _not_ resemble a cabbage, thank you very much,” Simmons interjected.

Ignoring her completely, Fitz went on, “This guy who looked like a head of overboiled cabbage. And what’s _worse,_ he kept agreeing with everything she said. _Everything.”_

“That _is_ true,” Simmons murmured.

Fitz nodded emphatically. “So’s the cabbage thing. I mean, I still understand why you liked Nathan from ops, because, _bloody hell_. I’d date him too, no questions asked. But _Milton?”_

Simmons shook her head, her expression a mixture of fond and exasperated. “Fitz didn’t like Milton much,” she told Sally, somewhat unnecessarily. “And that’s where cabbage comes in. It started when Mary from Communications - you know, the one who _never_ stops talking about herself - asked if I wanted to go for drinks. And Fitz leaned over and whispered, _‘remember what happened with Cabbage.’”_

“So that’s become a little tradition of ours,” Fitz said, picking up smoothly from his partner. “Whenever someone wants to go out with one of us, we remind each other about Cabbage. Wouldn’t want another disaster like that, you know?” 

“Are you sure that’s the only reason?” Sally blurted before she could stop herself.

Fitz and Simmons blinked at her with matching puzzled expressions.

“I… I mean,” Sally stuttered, trying and failing to recover, “isn’t there a chance that it’s, you know, actually about you guys liking _each other?_ That _that’s_ why you don’t like the idea of going out with someone else?” 

They both gaped at her in complete shock for a moment, like the idea was the most ridiculous thing they had ever heard. Then Fitz scoffed. “Pffft, _Simmons?_ And _me?_ Are you _crazy?_ We’re best friends, that’d _never_ work out.” 

Beside him, Simmons shook her head emphatically, her eyes wide. _“Never.”_

That was _such_ a strong denial, though - so _very_ emphatically a nothat Sally was almost certain they had both thought about it. 

She wanted to shake them both, or lock them together in a closet and refuse to let them out until they _realised,_ dammit. How was it so hard to see, anyway? They were _literally_ perfect for each other!

But they seemed very, _very_ determined to avoid that fact, if the way Fitz had stepped forward and was gently but firmly guiding her away from their workbench was any indication. “Was there anything else you wanted to know?” he asked.

Sally glanced down at her list and cringed. _Twenty more._ But there was no way they’d let her stick around for that long - in fact, she was being very definitely propelled away.

“One more thing,” she said, digging in her heels. “We’d like to know what it means when, uh… when you tell each other, _beryllium antimony?”_

“Oh, that one’s very sweet, actually,” Simmons said, giving a tiny shake of her head which Sally assumed meant _stop pushing her_ in Psychic Bond. Fitz grumbled under his breath, but stopped pushing her. 

“It was before an exam, and I was very stressed,” Simmons told her. “So Fitz came into my room and told me that I didn’t have to worry at all. When I asked him why, he just smiled and said, beryllium antimony.” 

“As you can imagine, I was very confused,” she said with a wry smile. “But then he explained -” 

“ - Beryllium antimony, because you’re the BeSt,” Fitz said, giving his partner a soft smile.

Simmons nodded, her gaze turning equally soft and fond as she looked at him. “So now we say that whenever one of us is stressed.”

Sally wanted to melt right down into a puddle of happy goo. Was it even _legal_ for two people to be this cute?

“Thanks a lot, guys,” she said, crumpling her list and giving them both a smile.

Simmons smiled back and gave her a little wave, and Fitz said something under his breath that might have been a polite goodbye or, more likely going by the way Simmons rolled her eyes, a “good riddance.” 

“Don’t look at me like that, that was _weird,”_ she heard Fitz’s voice float from their lab as she rounded the corner.

She could just picture Simmons shaking her head, eyes exasperated but full of affection. “Don’t be rude, Fitz,” she chided. “But you’re not wrong. It _was_ a little strange.” 

“Especially the part where she thought we might end up _together,”_ came Fitz’s voice again, sounding disgusted.

“Exactly!” Simmons agreed. “That’s _never_ going to happen, right? You’re not interested?” 

Sally didn’t miss the tiniest edge of regret in Simmons’s voice, but she was sure Fitz did.

“You’re my best friend, Jemma,” Fitz said, which, as Sally quickly realised, wasn’t actually an answer.

Oh, these two _idiots._ They were going to get married someday, she was willing to bet on it.

And when they did, she, Sally, would mail them this list, with a single caption after ‘cabbage’ _\- told you so._


End file.
